Think you had reason to be scared of the Miami Heat back when they were locking down this year’s NBA championship? What happened late Friday night ought to really scare you.

If you were thinking of this Heat conquest in singular mode—“not two, not three, not four, not five," to quote a Miami player familiar with the situation—you’d better start thinking plural. Why? Because Ray Allen walked away from the Boston Celtics to hop aboard this train.

This isn’t about Allen being the final piece to the repeat puzzle—and it’s definitely not about him being the bridge to the next generation. It is about him being almost 37, and going into his 17th season, and leaving money on the table and his home of the last five seasons, the unit he completed and the legacy of his only championship.

Ray Allen is only the first to make that move. He won’t be the last. That’s why LeBron and Co. might end up fulfilling his overblown, presumptuous prophecy after all.

There are going to be other Ray Allens in the next five or six years, never mind the next two or three. The Heat are reportedly chasing a few of them now, though they lack the caliber or resume of Allen (Marcus Camby, Rashard Lewis). The league is full of veterans looking not so much for one more big payday, but for one really good shot at the one thing money can’t buy: a ring.

Where else do they go for that? There aren’t that many candidates. The best one is the Heat. Now that LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Co. have figured out how to get to the top, they’ll do what it takes to stay there.

They’re not going anywhere. Even if they don’t go on a Russell-era Celtics run, the Heat are going to be hanging around late in June for years to come.

All they have to do now is wait for the cream of that hungry-vet crop to come to them every offseason. Pat Riley beckoned to Allen, and, by all accounts, within hours of their meeting in Miami, he was sold.

Reportedly, he had plenty of other reasons to spurn his old team—Yahoo! Sports reports that his fractured relationship with Rajon Rondo was a factor, as was the fact that Boston nearly traded him to Memphis during the regular season.

On the other hand, this was not the Hornets or Raptors for whom he was jumping ship.

The Celtics’ fiercest current rival, the obstacle to more championships for his partners Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce and the organization with the foresight to unite them? Yeah … what of it?

Call Allen a traitor if you like—plenty already are. Rip him for playing the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” game, even claim he’s going full-on LeBron and taking a “shortcut”—but at this stage of his career, Allen couldn’t care less about those labels as long as the one called “champion” comes with them.

Riley understands this as well as anybody. He knows from both sides of the fence.

Back in the 1990s, when his Knicks teams kept butting their heads against the brick wall of Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Riley often spoke of the frustration of great players having the terrible luck of hitting their primes at the same time as the legends. Soon, he said, those great players are going to want to let down their guards—maybe even their pride—and join up.

This particular time, he would note, the shoe was on the other foot. He remembered veterans coming to him after his Showtime Lakers had slaughtered some sacrificial playoff lamb, and did everything short of beg on bent knee to be brought in to team up with Magic, Kareem, Worthy and the rest.

That’s how the Mychal Thompsons and Bob McAdoos eventually landed at the Forum. Later, it was how players like John Salley, James Edwards and—how soon we forget—Robert Parish ended up with Jordan in Chicago.

Signing on with the challenger in those days was futile. Beyond a certain point in any true player’s career, priorities change and the hunger to join the champ on the pedestal surpasses the desire to knock that champion off.

In this case, with Allen, re-signing with the challenger is just as futile.

Allen, of course, owes nobody an explanation or apology, not after having been traded twice in his career, three times if you count draft night in 1996 (without the traders’ “loyalty” ever being questioned), and dangled this past season by the very Celtics many seem to think he’s betraying. In Jason Terry, Boston has already chased down Allen's replacement.

And if Celtics fans really feel Allen is backstabbing them, after what he did to help hang that 17th banner and restore the franchise’s pride and honor—then they’re too spoiled to deserve a player like him.

But this is no longer about the Celtics or the past. Allen saw his future, and it’s in Miami, under Riley and alongside LeBron.

Others like him will follow. They’d be crazy not to. Ray Allen’s future is also the NBA’s future, and players like him want in on it now.